Blog
Practical guides on AI, legal workflows and time capture, from the team behind OrdoLux.
Featured guides
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Designing Your ‘Matter Copilot’: AI as a Junior Team Member
How to think about AI as a junior colleague on each file, and design clear responsibilities and boundaries.
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Retention and Deletion of AI Outputs on Matters
Practical retention rules for prompts, outputs and logs so you don’t create a second, messier file.
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Talking to Clients About Legal AI: Transparency Without Alarm
How to explain your use of AI to clients in engagement letters, tenders and conversations.
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Avoiding Vendor Lock-In with Legal AI Tools
Questions to ask providers so your firm can move models or platforms later without redoing everything.
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Buying Case Management Software with ‘AI Features’: What to Look For
A buyer’s checklist for law firms evaluating case management systems that claim to have AI built in.
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6 Months Free — OrdoLux Founding Firm Access
We are opening OrdoLux to a small number of founding firms — 6 months of full platform access, completely free, no credit card required.
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AI in Legal Aid Practices: Doing More with Tight Margins
Ways that legal aid firms can use AI to manage volume work, supervision and time capture without breaking the budget.
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Structuring Counsel’s Instructions with Help from AI
How to use AI to organise facts, issues and questions before briefing counsel, without letting a model write the advice.
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AI for Inquests and Coroners’ Work: Chronologies and Bundles
AI can cut hours off inquest preparation. This guide covers how to use it for chronologies, bundle building and document review in coronial practice — and where to stay hands-on.
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AI in Property Transactions: Enquiries, Reports and Client Updates
Using AI to help with standard enquiries, reports on title and progress updates in conveyancing — while keeping partners comfortable with the risk.
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AI in Immigration Practice: Managing Complexity and Language
How immigration teams can use AI to handle long forms, guidance and multilingual documents without losing accuracy.
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AI in Family Law: Opportunities, Limits and Red Lines
AI can draft letters, summarise files and flag deadlines in family law — but there are clear limits. Here's an honest guide to where it helps and where it must not be used.
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AI for Tasks and Deadlines: Extracting Action Points from Correspondence
Using AI to pull out tasks, dates and deadlines from long email chains and letters, feeding your case management system automatically.
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Logging AI Use on Matters: Audit Trails That Supervisors Actually Read
The SRA and insurers will want to know how AI was used on a matter. Here's exactly what UK firms should record to satisfy partners, COLPs and professional indemnity insurers.
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Running Your First AI Pilot in a High-Street Firm
Most AI pilots in law firms fail because they produce anecdotes, not evidence. This four-week plan gives small UK firms a structured way to test, measure and decide.
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Refreshing Standard Letters and Precedents with AI
How to use AI to modernise standard letters and precedent banks, while keeping control of risk and tone.
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Training Support Staff and PAs to Use AI Safely
A framework for bringing secretaries and PAs into the firm’s AI plans, including guardrails, training and supervision.
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WhatsApp Time Capture for Law Firms: Messages, Voice Notes and Documents — onto the File
How a WhatsApp-first workflow can capture messages, transcribe voice notes, file documents into SharePoint and generate time entries automatically — without breaking supervision or audit trails.
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Conflicts and KYC Checks with AI: Faster Searches, Human Decisions
How AI can support conflicts and KYC checks by aggregating data and flagging matches, while keeping final decisions with compliance.
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AI for Legal Business Development: Smarter Pitches and Tenders
Practical ways to use AI to draft, tailor and proofread tenders and pitch documents without promising things the firm cannot deliver.
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Trial Bundles and Document Lists: Where AI Can (and Can’t) Help
Using AI to help with bundling, pagination and document lists for hearings, while keeping ultimate control with the litigation team.
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AI on Complaints and Negligence Files: Speed Up Review, Not Blame
How AI can help firms triage and analyse complaints and professional negligence files while staying aligned with duties to clients and insurers.
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Using AI for Attendance Notes and Conferences (Without Losing Nuance)
Ways to use AI to draft and refine attendance notes while keeping human judgment, tone and privilege front and centre.
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Microsoft 365 and Legal AI: Integration Patterns That Make Sense for Firms
How to combine Outlook, SharePoint and AI tools so that casework, documents and time capture live in one joined-up workflow.
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Driving Legal AI Adoption in a Small Firm: Four Moves That Actually Work
Getting partners and fee earners to actually use AI tools is harder than buying them. These change-management tactics work in small UK firms without committees or jargon.
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AI Time Capture for Email and Documents: What ‘Good’ Actually Looks Like
Key design principles for AI-driven time capture that fee earners trust, focusing on email, documents and background work.
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Building a Matter Chronology with AI: One Source of Truth, Not Ten Spreadsheets
A practical approach to using AI to maintain a live chronology for complex matters, fed from emails, notes and documents.
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AI Email Thread Summaries: Turning Inbox Chaos into Case Strategy
How UK litigators and advisers can use AI to summarise long email threads into clear next steps, without missing the important nuance.
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AI Policies for Law Firms That People Actually Read
Every UK law firm using AI needs a policy — but most are too long to read. This guide shows how to write one that supports adoption, manages risk and actually gets followed.
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Evaluating Legal AI Tools: A Practical Testing Framework
A simple evaluation framework for legal teams to test AI tools using realistic matters, golden answers and clear acceptance criteria.
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Using AI in Due Diligence Without Missing Red Flags
How to apply AI to contract and document review in due diligence while keeping lawyers firmly in control of risk, sampling and reporting.
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AI in Disclosure and eDiscovery: Practical Uses and Red Lines
Where AI can safely speed up disclosure and eDiscovery work, where human review is still essential, and how to explain your approach to opponents and the court.
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Confidentiality and Privilege When Using AI in Your Firm
Solicitors using AI risk breaching privilege without realising it. This guide covers the exact steps UK firms should take — from vetting AI vendors to safe daily practice.
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Hallucinations in Legal AI: How to Spot and Control Them
AI hallucinations in legal work can be career-ending. This guide explains why they happen, how to spot them before they reach a client or court, and what guardrails to put in place.
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RAG vs Fine-Tuning: Which Do Law Firms Actually Need?
A plain-English guide to retrieval-augmented generation versus fine-tuning, and when each approach makes sense for legal research, knowledge and document review.
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Prompt Engineering for Solicitors: Getting Reliable Results from AI
How solicitors can structure prompts, constraints and checks to get reliable, repeatable outputs from AI tools without turning into prompt hobbyists.
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How to Run an AI Risk Assessment in Your Firm
Every UK firm using AI needs a simple risk register. This guide shows how to inventory use cases, score risk, select controls and document sign-off — without overcomplicating it.
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The EU AI Act and UK Law Firms: A Practical 2025 Playbook
The EU AI Act affects UK firms using AI tools with European clients or systems. Here's what you actually need to do — policies, supplier checks and risk inventories explained.
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The Near-Term Future of Legal Tech: What Firms Should Prepare For
Five durable trends reshaping how UK law firms operate — from AI time capture to matter intelligence. No hype, just changes you can act on now.
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Client Communication in the Age of AI: Faster Without Losing the Human
Clients expect faster, clearer updates. This guide shows UK solicitors how to use AI to speed up communications without losing the judgment and empathy clients actually pay for.
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Ethics & Professional Duties When Using AI (for Solicitors)
The SRA expects solicitors to understand any AI tool they use. Here's what that means in practice — competence, supervision, confidentiality and your duty to the court.
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AI-Powered Contract Review: Where Firms Actually Win
AI can triage contracts, extract clauses and flag variances in minutes. Here's a step-by-step approach for UK solicitors to save time on review without losing control of the risk.
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Data Privacy & Confidentiality When Using AI in UK Law Firms
UK GDPR and SRA obligations create specific risks when solicitors use AI. This guide sets out what lawful, confidential AI use actually looks like in a UK law firm.
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AI in Judgments: Where the Line Sits (and What Solicitors Should Expect)
UK courts are beginning to engage with AI in submissions and bundles. Here's what solicitors need to know about judicial expectations and practical implications in 2026.
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Five Common Misconceptions About AI in Legal Practice
Think AI writes the advice, or that confidentiality is impossible? This guide separates the most common myths from the practical reality for UK law firms.
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Legal AI for UK Solicitors: Guides & Workflows
A practical guide for UK solicitors using AI — covering legal research, disclosure, time capture and billing. Straight-talking, UK-focused, updated for 2026.
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Time Capture & Billing for Law Firms: Guides & Workflows
Missed time costs UK law firms thousands every month. This hub covers the tools, habits and AI workflows that help fee earners capture more and bill accurately.
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AI in Legal Research: Precision Without the ‘Phantom Cases’
AI tools regularly invent case citations that don't exist. This guide gives UK solicitors practical guardrails to verify research, catch hallucinations and stay court-ready.
